Refinery streams typically require blending with one or more other streams and/or additives in various proportions to produce a finished product (e.g., diesel fuel, jet fuel, gasoline) with properties that meets all the industry and government standards. Such standards relate to chemical properties (e.g., aromatic content, sulfur content, etc.), physical properties (e.g., viscosity, boiling-range, etc.) and performance properties (e.g., cetane number, smoke point, etc.) of the finished product. Additionally, lower quality blendstocks (e.g., light cycle oil) may be upgraded to, e.g., diesel fuel, by blending with one or more other streams and/or additives as well.
Blending generally requires various streams and/or additives because many blend components have properties that achieve some but not all of the required standards for the finished product. For example, additives for improving properties such as cetane number or lubricity typically only improve one property at a time. Thus, it is typically not simple to simultaneously improve multiple properties. More problematic is that sometimes in improving one property degradation of other properties may occur. For instance, a lighter kerosene type material has traditionally been used to improve cloud point of a base diesel stream. However, the lighter kerosene type material can also decrease density and potentially lower cetane number depending on the starting cetane value. Furthermore, refiners are obligated to blend ever increasing amounts of renewable blend components, such as fatty acid methyl ester (FAME) or renewable diesel. However, those renewable blend components, while able to increase cetane number, may undesirably lower energy density and cloud point of the finished product.
Therefore, there is a need for distillate compositions with combinations of improved chemical, physical and performance properties that can be blended with various refinery streams to produce finished products with improved properties that meet appropriate standards. There is also a need for distillate compositions with combinations of improved chemical, physical and performance properties that can be used as a finished fuel product in neat form as well.